SGA Meeting Minutes 9/10/17

SGA Meeting 9-10

Campus Center 7pm

Recap:

This was a great first meeting back. Everyone was able to introduce themselves and talk about their hopes and expectations for the upcoming year. We went over how SGA is really structured. The First Appointments round is coming up and will begin September 26. The September Elections are beginning this week. The Student Finance Committee is currently finishing the budget for all SGA funded clubs. We talked about some of the changes coming to plenary. Plenary is September 24th at 7pm! We had a quick recap of Parade Night. We recapped some of the recent events including the renaming of College Hall and the Bringing it Home drive for student effected by floods. As well as beginning a conversation about action we can take for DACA.

Introductions:

Everyone went around and introduced themselves with their class year, pronouns, role in SGA, and what they are excited for in the upcoming year. (You can find info on all the Representative Council on the SGA website)

How SGA is structured:

Nanda Bhushan ‘19:

Just want to show the way its E-Board

Rep Co

Committees

Clubs

Affinity Groups

These are all different branches and no one has more authority than another

Expectations for SGA:

Alisha Clark ‘18: this is for people who would like to speak, not everyone has to. I want to affirm that everyone is a member of SGA and so encourages others to come to the meetings and to talk to me and the other members of the E-board because we are your peers. You can talk to us. My position doesn’t separate me from any of you. When I say expectations this is not just for the E-Board this is for all of us. Anyone?

Annika Cole ’18: Respect

Caitlin 2020: A space for conversations and we will all hold ourselves and each other accountable

Mary Cooper ‘19: open lines of conversation

2021: that what we do has an open impact on the community

Sierra 2020:difficault conversations

Una Girgua ’20: efficiency with effectiveness

Abby Brewster ‘18: Not attacking the person, attacking the idea. Not making it a space like SGA will make the other members feel that they are members

Alisha Clark ‘18: I expect all of us to encourage other members of the community to come to SGA events. Especially if you hear them saying that they don’t like SGA because of something that happened a few years ago that they should come back and give it a second chance.

General Announcements:

Alisha Clark ‘18: Time for Rep-co to announce anything important.

Nanda Bhushan ‘19: The appointments round will open up on September 26 and elected positions will be beginning to accept nominations this week.

Anna Huang ‘19: we are doing budget applications and the interviews will be next-next week and the budget will be released on Sept 25, because of plenary we can’t vote in person so we will do a vote via Google forms around the 23rd so look out for that and be sure to vote.

Plenary:

Alisha Clark ‘18: Speaking of plenary I think that this year is going to be great. We are going to get rid of Roberts rules and we are going to not going to waste time on repeated questions or on grammar related issues, we can have people email about sentence structure if they have a way that they would like it changed. Hopefully this will save a lot of time during plenary.

Caitlin Haskett ‘20: I think getting rid of it (Roberts Rules) is a good idea, I’m just wondering if we are going to have a new structure for the ways that we are going to structure things during plenary.

Olivia Porte ‘18: What are Roberts rules of order?

Alisha Clark ‘19: Who is Robert? Who knows what it is? Many adults don’t even know. We are going to change especially the language used because so many people don’t know how to properly present it. And if people are just criticizing the way that we are talking instead of actually focusing on what they are saying. I made a slide show that talks about plenary, what we need, what we do, what you see. And so I’m going to attach this to the minutes and so the first years and upperclassmen can learn about or learn more about plenary

(see below)

Nanda Bhushan ‘19: It (Plenary) has been really inefficient and outdated. We are also trying to change the voting making it more streamlined. With follow through we will have someone who will check in and make sure that the resolutions that are passed are going to be actualized.

Alisha Clark ‘18: Also we are going to change the way that people lead up to plenary. Looking at the resolutions in a more productive way and have a way to vote that’s more efficient. I am looking into using an app to vote.

Hannah Symonds ‘19: what if we don’t have a phone that would support something like that?

Alisha Clark ‘18: I think that this reaches out to other devices

Dana Gold ‘18: Does it work on computers?

Lyncy Nyandoche ‘21: Can you email us the link or the name of the app?

Alisha Clark ‘18: We can do a trial of it next week. I think that it only works if everyone is in the same room. I want everyone to want to be there so we will be making it fun

We have plenary resolution writing workshops that you can come to this week.

Alisha Clark ‘18: There has been a lot of buzz surrounding college hall, formerly known as Thomas. And it was interesting to see the schools response right after Charlottesville and then after I started the petition online to change the name, which received a lot of support.

Una Girgua ‘20: I think it is very important for the school to acknowledge all of the students who did this, you (Alisha) and Maeve and Precious and their names are not known by most of the school and BMC is taking all of the credit for making the change.

Phoebe Dopulos ‘19: 2 years ago Yale decided to rename Calhoun college, He was the Vice President of the United States and a secessionist and it took until 2015 for them to do it and that was because of the students but Yale took the credit and Bryn Mawr doing the same thing. But there was a lot of resistance from alums and I think that is important for the current student body to show that it was us who was that voice who made the change and that we need to take responsibility in a good way.

Alisha Clark ‘18: I was furious when I read the first email it was such a generic Kcass email. Especially cause it was her first year when the confederate flag incident happened and this was her chance to make up for it. And then the email four days later was obviously not their words.

Media has been reaching out to me, and students from Yale and Brown did as well talking about the process in getting things changed and dealing with the admin.

Nanda Bhushan ‘19: I think that this can be a way to have future conversations about the ways that we can change Bryn Mawr from being the space made for white women to being a space for us now and so what student way

Alisha Clark ‘18: I put that all aside though because of all of the natural disasters. I created a drive called Bringing It Home. I decided to do it because I have so many friends here from Houston. I felt bad after that I only thought of it because of something that hit close to home. I think that we should always have drives like this so that we can be more preemptive. I thought it was effective and I want to keep it going. Is everyone okay with that?

*People respond in agreement*

Parade Night:

Alisha Clark ‘18: How was parade night? Traditions come from SGA

Leah Baker ‘19: So there was a false start at the very beginning we had the runners at the front joggers in the middle and walkers in the back and as soon as we said that the runners took off and we were concerned because of the road and everything. So we had to get them all back again.

Una Girgua ‘20: I want to ask if BMC or SGA has any plans to express complete support of all students who may be affected by DACA.

Alisha Clark ‘18: Yeah so like Donald trump… I just watched a video about this and I do know students who have DACA and I understand but it’s so complicated so we are trying to figure out what the best way is to handle it. Its hard because with something like the disasters there are concrete things to do but with this is it is hard to know what the best thing to do is.

Lydia Sanchez ‘18: I’m sure that since Philly is such a big city I’m sure that there are legal resources that we can find for students in need.

Alisha Clark ’18: I work for Philly VIP

Carolyn Cannizzaro ‘19: I know that the ACLU takes a lot of volunteers and so we can see if people need students to come and volunteer.

Calla Carter ‘18: What can people individually do: I found out about a service called resist spot that automatically faxes or mails what you text to your local congressperson whatever you text the number for free.

Manroocha Singh ‘18: This isn’t really about something we can do in the city. When we are advocating for DACA we should be cautious about the language we use. Not criminalizing the parents in the conversation.

Alisha Clark ‘18: It is much different that dealing with Houston

Sierra Bradshaw-Kreimer ’20: There is a migrant’s rights coalition and so we should collaborate.

Alisha Clark ‘18: I’ll send the text through email, I don’t want to be insensitive to these issues and they can’t be grouped together. I want to give everything my all. This is something that we need to do and it would call for help from admin, but we are going to think of what we can do as students.

Trivia:

What does “Jawn” Mean?

Answer: Anything really. It’s a general noun used to describe things that you can’t find the word for at the moment.